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May 22, 2013

John Thorne: They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman

John Rosemond: 'Disciplinary math' adds up to parental successl

Warren Richey: Are prayers before public meetings OK? Supreme Court to decide
Rick Montgomery: Use of ADHD drugs as study aid raises concern on campuses

Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.: 6 convincing reasons you should keep carbs in your diet

Eoin O'Carroll: Scientists examine nothing, find something

The Kosher Gourmet by Carole Kotkin: This soup is made from one of the great pleasures of spring: A wonderful pairing of rosy color and earthy tang

May 20, 2013

Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?

Hannan Adely: Town raises Palestinian flag at City Hall

Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Morgan Housel: When smart investors do stupid things

Sharon Saloman, M.S., R.D.: Hunger games: Eat more, weigh less, without starving

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star

The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting

May 13, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation

David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church

Emily Alpert: Recession dragged down birth rates for less-educated women
Morgan Housel: The deep downside of home ownership

Peter Teffer: Will Dutch police soon be stalking cybercriminals on your computer?

Heidi McIndoo, M.S., R.D.: Meatless 'meat' can have its own set of problems

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Celebrate! This must-try appetizer is delicate yet has depth of flavor: Corn-Leek Cakes with Caviar, Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be

Caroline B. Glick: The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

Mona Charen: Hawking's Moral Calculus: The man and the movement he embraces
Morgan Housel: The biggest retirement myth ever told

Sandi Doughton: Eyes may provide new insight into brain problems

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : The Great Gatsby's Jewish Ties; Jews in the "Time 100 list" List; People's Most Beautiful Women

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A sweet-hot meal: Pear salsa spices up salmon

May 8, 2013

Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas

Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate

Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
Amanda Paulson: Study reveals sad truths about community colleges

Harvard Health Letters: Evidence weak that zinc, echinacea are beneficial

The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility

May 6, 2013

Edmund Sanders and Patrick J. McDonnell: Think Israel's objective in Syria is to weaken Assad or embolden the rebels? Think again

Brian Bennett: Israeli airstrikes may show weakness in Syrian defense

Michael Ollove: Millions of ex-felons, parolees and those on probation are about to be entitled to tax-payer paid health coverage
Karen Kaplan: Most men can skip PSA test for prostate cancer, urologists say

Kimberly Lankford: How to track down a lost life insurance policy

Dream of Mars exploration achievable, experts say

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan M. Selasky: EGGPLANT WRAPS are an easy, sumptuous and scrumptious meal

May 3, 2013

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Human Courage and the Unavoidable, Disturbing Text

Steven Emerson: Attorney General Fights CAIR in Court, Lauds it in Public

Mediterranean diet helps beat dementia: study
Harvard Health Letters: When to be screened for a hearing problem

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Iron Man's Jewish Connections; Marc Maron's New TV Show; Martin Landau Grows Up with Israel; Shalom, Allan Arbus

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: A sweet surprise for Mother's Day dessert

May 1, 2013

Jonathan Rosenblum: An Improbable Journey to Orthodoxy

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Obama, Not Israel for Syria Push

Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Halena M. Gazelka, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: What you need to know about implanted pain relief devices

Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine

Jessica Shugart: When it comes to math, MRIs may be better than IQs

The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali: The celebrated chef on how high-maintenance ASPARAGUS RISOTTO need not be

April 29, 2013

Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust

Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?

Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Morgan Housel: He's rich, smart and old: Listen to him

Thomas Salinas, D.D.S.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: The safety of amalgam fillings

Harvard Health Letters: Tomatoes and stroke protection

Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington: Swing into spring with lemon cream pie

April 26, 2013

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The world is a mirror

Caroline B. Glick: Time to confront Obama

Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Kimberly Lankford: New strategies ease pain of paying for long-term care insurance

Howard LeWine, M.D.: Ask the Harvard Experts: Too much ibuprofen?

Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jewish Major Leaguers, 2013; New Movies and Comedy Show; Shalom, 'Lumpy' (Leave it to Beaver)

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Ho : A bright and cheerful salad to herald the warmer months ahead

April 24, 2013

Steven Emerson: Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
Harvard Health Letters: Can you get headaches from headache medication?

Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D.: How to easily get more Omega-3s in your diet

Melissa Healy: Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: Chipotle Chili Butternut Squash Soup is bold, zesty, hot

April 22, 2013

Ken Dilanian: Counterterrorism's future is unclear

US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer

P.J. Skerrett, M.D.: How to recognize a good whole grain product

Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Teen actor Jonah Bobo in New Flick: Hunky James Wolk on Mad Men; Erich Segal's Daughter Writes Prize-Winning Jewish Novel


Jewish World Review Aug 2, 2012/ 14 Menachem-Av, 5772

Libs Discover Their Inner Cheney

By A. Barton Hinkle




http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | To liberal Americans during the Bush years, Vice President Dick Cheney was the apotheosis of evil in the modern world. Four years later, they have decided he was right all along.

In the Bush years they detested Cheney because he prosecuted the war on terror with unapologetic zeal. After 9/11, it was Cheney who said preventing further attacks would require America to go over to "the dark side." It was Cheney who said waterboarding — "a dunk in the water," as he called it — was "a no-brainer."

In fact, Cheney went so far as to say such methods were not only morally permissible, they were in fact morally required: "I think it would have been unethical or immoral for us not to do everything we could in order to protect the nation against further attacks," he said. After leaving office, he told CBS the use of harsh interrogation techniques saved "perhaps hundreds of thousands" of lives.

That was Cheney's ethical rationale: Individual rights and constitutional rules might be important, but saving lives was more important by far. As David Addison, Cheney's chief of staff, once insisted when the White House's Office of Legal Counsel was threatening to withhold approval of a certain counterterrorism program: "If you rule that way, the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands."

To liberals, this was absolute hogwash. The threat of a terrorist attack — even one as horrific as 9/11 — did not justify the manifold constitutional affronts, from warrantless wiretapping to demanding library patrons' records under the Patriot Act, the Bush administration was committing. Yes, saving lives was important — but not at the expense of civil liberties and constitutional law.

All of that, however, was before Aurora.

Since James Holmes murdered 12 people and wounded 58 more in a Colorado movie theater two weeks ago, liberal America has been screaming from the rooftops that saving lives is more important than individual rights — and insulting anyone who dares to think differently.

The failure to pass more gun-control laws, says The New York Times, proves "politicians are far too fearful of the gun lobby to address gun violence." The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne agrees, calling that failure evidence of "eternal gutlessness." To the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, support for gun rights is "a belief so irrational that even death and destruction cannot alter it." (So, hey, no need to debate the merits — Those People are all crazy!)

Gopnik's take neatly encapsulates the liberal mindset: Massacres make the need for more gun control so obvious there is nothing left to debate. Since the solution is so plainly beyond dispute, the failure to impose it can be accounted for only by something else, such as cowardice or derangement.

Gun-rights defenders have responded mostly on pragmatic grounds, by insisting gun control doesn't work or that mass killers can be stopped by shooting back. But there is also a strong moral argument against gun control — one that mirrors the liberal case against Bush-era counterterrorism tactics.

Sixty million Americans own firearms, and almost none of them ever will fire a shot in anger. The premise behind gun control, then, is that millions of law-abiding Americans should have their rights and liberties circumscribed in order to prevent a minuscule fraction — something like three one-hundredths of 1 percent — from abusing those rights.

Imagine the uproar if you applied this reasoning to, say, Muslim-Americans. Imagine saying, "We know most of you will never commit a terrorist act, but we also know some of you might do so in the future, so we're going to ask every single one of you to register with your local police department. This is a simple, common-sense measure that could save lives." Americans, quite rightfully, would erupt in furious outrage at such a proposal. Why, then, do liberals embrace it for gun owners?

Answer: Because — just like conservatives who favor racial profiling — they consider some rights important and others not.

When the Supreme Court upheld the habeas corpus rights of alleged enemy combatants in 2008, The New York Times lavished praise on its "stirring defense" of "human decency" and a "cherished right . . . so central to the American legal system that it has its own clause in the Constitution." Two years later, when the court upheld an individual right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment (another "clause in the Constitution," you might say) The Times struck a far different tone. Citing the thousands of lives lost to gun violence, it wrote: "The arguments that led to Monday's decision undermining Chicago's [handgun ban] were infuriatingly abstract, but the results will be all too real and bloody."

Dick Cheney could have said precisely the same thing about the court's rulings on the rights of terrorist detainees. In fact, he did. As he put it in an interview: "How does one argue with someone convinced that the routine massacre of our children is the price we must pay for our freedom?"

Oops, sorry — that was The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, writing about those who support gun rights. But you can see how easily it is to get the two confused, can't you?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

A. Barton Hinkle is Deputy Editor of the Editorial Pages at Richmond Times-Dispatch Comment by clicking here.


Previously:




07/30/12: Feds want to help you --- whether you want help or not
07/23/12: Barack Obama, Storyteller-in-Chief
07/23/12: Nation's worst outsourcer? You
07/19/12: Listen up, America: You need to knuckle under
07/12/12: Obama, Romney: As Different as Two Peas in a Pod
07/05/12: Are teenagers big children --- or little adults?
06/25/12: Minorities treated as mere numbers
06/21/12: Memo to the the Little Guy: Seemingly innocuous activity could bring the federal hammer down out of a clear blue sky
06/19/12: We mustn't let America be buffaloed
05/31/12: Drop and Give Uncle Sam 20
05/15/12: The feds would like to know if you enjoyed that video
05/03/12: Obama inspires: 'America --- Still Not as Bad Off as Venezuela!'
04/26/12: It's everyone's favorite time of year again
03/29/12: GOP disillusionment is a good thing
03/27/12: Just what America needs: more red tape
03/20/12: Nation wondering: what happening to language?
02/21/12: Culture warriors resort to propaganda
02/15/12: Step away from that cookie and grab some air
02/08/12: Lessons in heresy
02/01/12: Do We Really Need Pickle-Flavored Potato Chips?
01/11/12: Shut up, they explained
12/30/11: A Modest Proposal: Let's Ban All Sports!
12/26/11: A Christmas letter from the Obamas
02/24/11: Will the next Watson need us?
12/24/10: Here Are Some Good Gifts for People You Hate
06/15/10: The Presinator
05/26/10: More than equal
04/08/10: Angry Right Takes a Page From Angry Left but guess who is ‘ugly’?
02/16/10: Either Obama owes George W. Bush an apology, or he owes the rest of us a very good explanation for his about-face on wiretapping
02/03/10: Talkin' to us 'tards
01/27/10: I never thought I'd see the day when progressives would howl in ragebecause the Supreme Court said government should not ban books
01/07/10: Gun-Control Advocates Play Fast and Loose
12/31/09: Nearly everything progressives say about neoconservative interventionism abroad applies to their own preferred policies at home





© 2011, A. Barton Hinkle

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